The Slow-Cooked Sentence

Pairings:
Sentence matched to song

“SEAGULLS! (Stop It Now!) by Bad Lip Reading.

“Things I want to stop doing: make dinner, lose weight, fill up a gas tank, get in shape, love social-media posts, dread climate change, wonder what Trump’s tweeting, wake at 3 a.m. to discover the car missing, worry at 3 a.m. where my 20-year-old is, learn Dutch, stay in touch …”

Potholes on the road taken. 

 

Golden Age by Chris Staples.

“Memories might be entertaining, but rarely are they newsworthy. Only when the intersection of nostalgia and the future is made relevant to the present can the publication of memories be justified.”

 – Tarnished story in a gilded age.

 

America by Simon and Garfunkel.

“Loyalty is the ligature binding past to future, stitching time into a whole.”

Ursula K. LeGuin on integrity as linchpin to past, future.

 

Pomegranate by Poi Dog Pondering.

Oh, round, red rock sprung from the hot earth of civilization, heavy in the hand and in meaning, your tender flesh protected in a leathered husk of pericarp so like the pericardium that wraps my heart.

Pomegranate as mouthful and metaphor.

 

Nuvole bianche by Ludovico Einaudi.

“As eye noted the weakened strength in sun and father traveling parallel paths across winter sky and sleeping earth, I considered our shared origin, the raw material for father, sun and self, born in a moment when something tiny, dense and hot exploded.”

– One man’s origin story.

 

Gloria by Patti Smith.

“I exist only here, within soft flesh sculpted into heavy breast and rounded hip. I’ve tattooed it with ink, pierced it with iron, rubbed lotion into its skin, and poured whiskey down its throat. Abused or adored, this flesh is mine, and yet I must fight to own it.”

A manifesto hidden within mise-en-scène.

 

 

Connected by Luke Dick.

“If I could invite any poet to join me on a walk, it would be Mary Oliver. That being impossible, I take her words.”

Relatives.

 

When Irish Girls Grow Up, written by Tom Russell, performed by Dolores Keane and Iris Dement.

“Forever she sits on her vinyl couch, laughing, cussing, and drinking whiskey sweating in a glass, a cigarette and the phone in hand’s reach.”

I am not a rolling stone.

 

Idaho sung by Josh Ritter.

“Words were warm bodies yearning for home, and nothing more was written that day.”

Driving to Idaho.

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